Anyone else think Technological Singularity is a joke?

[mcantar18c]

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Had an awesome response written up with H.G. Wells involved etc. Realized you guys where talking robots not aliens.
Have not slept since Thursday morning will give approprite response in the AM.

[BPTactical]

Coming soon-Terminator

[SideShow Bob]

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated...

[Hoosier]

The core of the Singularity concept is really looking at what happens in the elbow of an exponential graph.

I think Kurzweil is overly optimistic in his timeframe, but the concept has some merit.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzwei...nsform_us.html

This video is from 2005.

This guy is a bit odd, no doubt. He has an employee who's job is to manage all the pills he takes, trying to extend his lifespan past the "singularity", which he expects will happen circa 2040.

We continue to see new ways that computers feed back on themselves. For example, it wouldn't be possible to make current computer chips without using previous computer chips.

Genetic Algorithms can be applied to any design that can be modeled. For example, a computer can model the radiation pattern from an arbitrary antenna design. A GA can then take an antenna design, randomly modify it, and model that -- take the results from that modeling to randomly make other adjustments and test them, iterating over the loop. It's evolution for your product design, done by a computer and randomness. NASA used this technique to develop very small all-axis high gain antenna for some microsats recently.

The ATX form factor is alive and well, but physical package standards have long life spans. We have flipped machines so the power supplies are at the bottom. We routinely have double-width video cards, even two video cards bonded with SLI/Xfire. GPU's can crunch math like nobodies business anymore. SATA pushing 6Bps, USB 3, DVI-D, HDMI, everywhere you look the technology is getting faster, better, easier, and cheaper. I just build a machine for $500 that is an order of magnitude faster than my $4500 machine from five years ago.

So like I said, Kurzweil is ambitious on his timeline, and over-reaching on some stuff (bio-informatics is slower than he thinks) -- but I think we will get to where the rate-of-change is almost incomprehensible. The social aspect of technology has gotten very interesting, from 20 years ago with very few people using computers or networks, to today where everyones parents are on Facebook.

It's all about Δv.

H.

[spyder]

I think it is an easy concept to get actually. There is already tech out there that most people don't understand, some kinda know what it's about, and few actually know how it works. You build new technology on top of that technology and your margins of understanding go down, keep doing that again and again and again. There is already so much new tech out there that is just amazing when you learn about it, and a lot of it is old stuff. This is already taking place, it's just in small quantities and no one pays attention to it, or knows it's out there. I'm not saying it is going to happen any time soon on some vast scale like stated originally, but, eventually I see something along those lines happening.

[sneakerd]

Sideshow Bob took my line. "Incorrect strategy- Number One"

[Elhuero]

kurzweil is a nutjob.

he's trying to stay alive to reach the point where human consciousness can be transferred into computers, thus achieving immortality.

his theory has merits, but his timeline is off and he's gonna die a sad panda before his dream is realized.

my opinion.... in the future that's coming a man that can make fire without matches, find, kill, skin an prepare game to eat, and hit a target at 500 yards with a rifle will be worth 58.25 uber geeks like kurzweil.

[KevDen2005]

I think it's possible. Then, after a major world wide nuclear strike, machines will fight and wipe out the remaining humans. Hopefully there will be a man that can lead everyone and fight these machines...my fear at this point will be time travel...